


unfold your untold story

by emthought



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22218742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emthought/pseuds/emthought
Summary: Excerpts from Trina’s therapy sessions with Mendel.
Relationships: Jason & Trina (Falsettos), Marvin/Trina (Falsettos), Trina & Mendel Weisenbachfeld, Trina/Mendel Weisenbachfeld
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	unfold your untold story

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there. First time writing for this fandom, though I'm pretty obsessed with these characters these days. Feedback is always appreciated.

It’s their second session together, and Trina is sitting across from him on the small couch in his office. Though she initially came to him to speak about Jason, there are several other elements he thinks would be valuable to unpack.

“Tell me what a typical day with Marvin was like,” Mendel tells her.

“Well, he worked a lot,” Trina says.

“And when you were actually together?”

“Marvin had specific ideas about how everything should be. The roles each of us should play, how other people should see us, even how dinner should be cooked,” she says. “He would always get tense if things went off script.”

“What happened when he got tense?”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“What did he do?”

“He’d get frustrated with me, mostly. I’ve always felt like it was my fault our marriage felt apart.”

“Trina, he’s the one who had the affair.”

“But maybe if I’d just been a better wife…maybe there’s something I could have done.”

“Short of being a man, I’m not sure there’s anything you could have done.”

“For years there’s always been something he’s told me I should have done better.”

* * *

“What surprised me most about the divorce and everything leading up to it is that it is that I didn’t see it coming,” Trina says. “I should have seen it coming.”

“These kind of things are often shocking,” Mendel replies. He hasn’t known her that long, but the anger toward herself in her voice already breaks his heart.

“I should have opened my eyes sooner. We grew apart so long ago. But we were playing roles, and I thought we did them well enough. I thought I’d done mine well enough.”

“What role were you playing?”

“A happy, Jewish wife in a perfectly normal family.”

“Did it start out as a role?”

He wonders if she was ever happy with him, or if it was always a façade – well kept in the beginning, until the cracks spread and they couldn’t ignore it anymore, and everything became undone.

Trina shakes her head.

“It was real at the very beginning, for me at least. But I don’t know if it ever was for him. I think he wanted to be with me because he felt like it was what he was supposed to do. He was expected to be with a woman like me, and certainly not a man. And when I got pregnant, he was expected to marry me.”

Mendel nods.

“I thought things were good in the beginning. It was tense when I realized I was pregnant with Jason, but I thought that was normal since a baby wasn’t something we’d planned on.”

“What about when Jason was born?”

“It was the happiest day of my life. But eventually Marvin started pulling away. Spending less time at home, working more and more. It didn’t seem like he was interested in either one of us,” she says. “It was like that for years. I knew he didn’t love me. But I also didn’t think he’d leave.”

* * *

“I feel like I do nothing but complain when I’m in here with you.”

“There’s a certain catharsis in venting. But I don’t think you complain too much. It’s ok to take a load off your feet sometimes,” he says, wondering if Marvin put the idea that she should talk less into her head.

“I don’t want to seem ungrateful for everything I do have, in spite of all that’s happened.”

“Let’s spend some time talking about the good things today, then.”

“I think Jason’s finally starting to come out of his shell. He’s been spending a bit more time with the kids at his school, and he seems happy with them. I don’t think any parent ever stops worrying about their child, but I’m a little less anxious right now.”

* * *

“I want to ask you a question that might be difficult,” Mendel tells her one afternoon.

She nods.

“You’ve said before you knew that Marvin didn’t love you.”

“He didn’t.”

“Why did you stay?”

She’s quiet.

“You deserve to be with someone who loves you,” he says gently.

* * *

“Once in awhile I find myself so angry at Marvin.”

“Only once in awhile?”

“Ok, so maybe it’s a somewhat regular occurrence.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Everything shouldn’t have ended up the way it did. And I blame him for that. Day after day I spent hours cleaning the house and cooking dinner for him to come home to, because he told me it needed to be that way.”

“What would happen if it wasn’t that way?”

“He’d get angry with me. I hated for Jason to hear the yelling, so I tried to make it work. And I did it well. But we still fell part. He still left.”

“That’s on him, Trina.”

He needs her to know that she’s done nothing wrong. That she deserves better – so much better – than someone who constantly yells at her.

“I know,” she says, looking into his eyes. “That’s why I’m angry with him.”

* * *

“The more I think about it, the more I realize how often we were both pretending for so much of our years together. There’s no doubt in my mind that he did his fair share of it. He wanted me to cook for him and Whizzer and Jason, like we were this big tight knit family. As if he hadn’t left suddenly after being elsewhere emotionally for years,” Trina says. “And we were anything but happy. There was yelling all the time.”

“And when he was yelling, that was his fault.”

“I know that. And there’s a lot he’s at fault for. But he wasn’t alone in that. I turned a blind eye to so many things. I was pretending we were fine when we were really anything but. I was so angry with him for the way he completely blew up our life. But now I realize it was for the best. We weren’t happy together. And we deserve – I deserve – a partner who really loves me. I see that now,” she says. Her eyes are bright, as if she’s discovered an idea she plans to hold onto.

He hopes she does.


End file.
